Adam Vaughan

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, just to be clear, what the member opposite is asking for is a document that the Conservatives produced for themselves about a policy they were thinking about. It was produced and written before we were even sworn in as a government, which means it has nothing to do with the policies we have introduced. The report they crave is not about a policy of this government; it is about a policy of the government they used to be part of.

I was going to make an access to information request for the Conservatives' climate change plan. However, I realized that not only could I not get it, but they could not even redact it, because it does not exist. That is the problem.

If the member opposite really wants to know what we are doing about climate change and what the price on carbon is all about, I direct him to https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-action/pricing-carbon-pollution/estimated-impacts-federal-system.html. Everything we have done about our policy is on the web. Everything about your policy exists on a piece of paper that was redacted. As a government, we have released everything.

Could the member opposite please tell me why he wants a document from his former cabinet members?

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I want to take up this notion that there is some report that this government has generated that it is not sharing with the Canadian people, because I have heard it referred to over and over again as a cover-up.

They acquired the document that was redacted through the Freedom of Information Act, which is a process entirely governed by public servants, not by the government of the day. The document they are holding up was released literally the day after the last federal election, before the results were even gazetted, before any members of this House of Commons were legally even put in their seats, let alone appointed as ministers. Even the Prime Minister had not been sworn in. The report that they are talking about is one that the previous government commissioned before it left office, and that the previous government played a role in composing and reporting.

I just wonder why the members opposite do not talk to members of the previous cabinet who may have read the document, held the document, had carriage of the document, understood the document, framed the terms of reference for the document, produced the document, held the document in their hands, and actually had the document before we even got into power. The document they want they had; they just forgot to read it. I am curious as to why they do not read their government documents. Is that really the way the rest of the cabinet functioned over the last 10 years?

[Department of Public Works and Government Services Act, June 12th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, we have a community housing project in our riding that is currently under construction and I am wondering if the member opposite would agree. We have managed to acquire 68 apprenticeships for young people in a marginalized community, racialized youth who are now working in the building trades, working toward getting their full papers. In one case, one of the young people, instead of renting a home in the neighbourhood, has now bought a house across the street from the project.

One of the problems we have encountered though is that the local civic union has opposed these apprenticeship programs as “free labour” even though they are being paid to private labour standards. Has the member opposite had conversations with the Canadian Labour Congress to try to get some of the unions involved in this process to make sure marginalized youth, youth who are having trouble accessing the job market and training, are embraced by the union movement and brought into the union movement through this apprenticeship and local benefits program?

[Pride Month, June 7th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in Toronto, June is one of the most beautiful months of the year. It is the month when we celebrate that our city is the safest and best place in the world to fall in love. It is Pride Month.

No matter who people are, how they express their gender, whom they love, how they love, or why they love, Toronto is the place to be, because we are celebrating people and their love this month. It is so much fun that now all of Canada has joined in, but let us face it, Toronto's Pride celebrations are the biggest and the best on the planet.

Whether it is people's first Pride or their last, whether they are marching or dancing down the street, whether they are watching from the sides or on TV, whether they are a mayor, a premier, a backbencher, or a member of cabinet, it makes no difference. Someone can be a school trustee and attend Pride. People should come and celebrate as a family, bringing their brother, sister, mom, and aunt.

On behalf of Pride Toronto, I invite one and all to the city of Toronto to celebrate and feel the love. Also, people should not forget their squirt guns.

[National Security Act, 2017, June 7th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech.

I will have to phrase my question in English because I want to be very specific about this. Within this context in particular, we all know that because a single Muslim may be a terrorist does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists. In the same way, we know that a single individual who threatens to kill a member of Parliament does not mean that all members of that person's group are terrorists.

In the context of counselling terrorism or counselling violence, would the member agree that if you encourage organizations and individuals to attack a government, who through their actions specifically say and give their name to it and threaten to kill members of Parliament, which has happened with the emails we have all received in the last few weeks, that the organizations involved are counselling terrorism?

It is true there are gun owners who are threatening to kill members of Parliament and there are members of your party encouraging gun owners. I am not saying that all gun owners are terrorists by any stretch, any more than you are saying that all Muslims are terrorists. However, when we get into a situation of counselling terrorism, if there are gun owners who threaten the lives of MPs, would you not agree that something needs to change in the way conversations about politics, terrorism, and violence happen in this country, and that those activities should not be criminalized, but rather that the political party involved should temper the conversation and bring it back to a real one so that all people are not tarred with the same brush?

[Business of Supply, June 4th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague across the way and heard him talk about his party's commitment to indigenous people. I thought we shared that. However, I then went back and reviewed the position of the NDP platform in the last campaign on the Human Rights Tribunal ruling where Canada was shown to be short of providing adequate supply of children's services. The party opposite's commitment in the last campaign, if we are talking about how important this case was, was to commit no dollars to resolving it. In fact, there was not one penny committed to health care for indigenous health care in their platform.

What I find really interesting was the commitment around indigenous infrastructure, with $25 million to be spent in the fourth year of the mandate by the party opposite. Twenty-five million dollars does not even build a single water plant. Under that party, boil water alerts would have doubled every year as a result of their underfunding.

The member opposite speaks as if he cares about indigenous rights. Why did he run for a party that put no dollars into indigenous infrastructure, no dollars into indigenous health care, and no dollars to transform the relationship he says his party cares about?

[Business of Supply, June 4th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, one of the funniest moments in my by-election, the victory over the NDP in 2014, was when the candidate from Fort McMurray promised to build the Canada east pipeline, while the same night the candidate in the riding I was running in promised not to build it. In other words, they were saying one thing to one group of people in one part of the country, and then something different, literally on the same night, in a different part of the country. Thank goodness for Twitter. Thank goodness for a little device like the one I am holding, which also happens to show us what the NDP promised in terms of water cleanup across the country last year. If the NDP had won, the problem for indigenous people would have been that the New Democrats might have kept their promise.

Are members aware that the New Democrats were proposing to spend only $25 million on clean water this year if they had won? It was not just that, but $25 million was also supposed to solve the housing crisis and the infrastructure crisis in indigenous communities across the country. That is the level of support that the NDP ran on in the last campaign.

To make matters worse, Cindy Blackstock is someone whose name is often raised by the opposition. Do members known how much the New Democrats put on the table to deal with the crisis in care for young people that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal said we had to step up on? Do members know how much the NDP promised in the last campaign? It was zero. That is the platform that the New Democrats ran on. I am surprised they won any seats in indigenous communities. I wonder if the member and the parliamentary secretary would care to comment on why we do not want to keep NDP promises.

[Housing, May 11th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to housing, the member opposite might want to take a look at the headlines in British Columbia this morning. Yesterday the minister announced $90 million, 2,000 new and affordable housing units. Victoria is on the verge of ending chronic homelessness as a direct result of the national housing strategy being spent into cities, creating the affordability to which the previous government turned a blind eye.

The previous government invested less money in housing than any other federal government in the history of the country, and it was taking money out of the affordable housing system. We have invested. We have spoken to those issues. We have a 10-year plan and $40 billion. Help is on the way because the member's government was defeated.

[Employment Insurance, May 11th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that since taking office, we have made EI more accessible. We have made it more flexible, and we have made it easier to achieve working while on benefit, as well as extending some of the sick benefits to Canadians. EI is there to help Canadians get through illness. It is there to help them get through downturns in the economy. We have improved the system. We continue to focus on this issue, and we will have more to report on this in the near future.

[Pensions, May 8th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, we are taking concrete measures to help improve living conditions for Canada's seniors. As the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development mentioned in his response to the member's original question the other day, our government is well aware of how important it is for Canadians to have access to all the old age security benefits they are entitled to. That is why we have implemented mechanisms that will help seniors, particularly women, receive these benefits more easily, in fact, automatically. That is also why we have modified and improved access to the guaranteed income supplement for the most vulnerable among them. It is also why the national housing strategy has a specific carve-out for seniors' housing. This government is supporting seniors every way it can and is seeking to improve those supports in every way it can as well.

The member's critique of the program is an honourable one, but it is easier said than done sometimes. We are exploring ways to ensure that existing seniors receive their benefits automatically. In the meantime, we have taken the steps we have to make sure, going forward, that no senior will be left behind as we enact automatic enrolment for both of those benefits.